Manifest Destiny
by FalseEyelashes
Summary: People live and people die. People grieve and people cry. People hate and people love. Planes can crash and trees can fall fire can catch and hearts can break. This really isn’t anything special. This really isn’t anything new. They’re just missing the di


**Manifest Destiny**

**Disclaimer:** Oh, you know the drill. _Lost_ isn't mine nor am I making any sort of illicit profit on any stories created based off of JJ Abram's and friends' creation. Not mine. And I am under no illusions that it might be. And P.S.: I'm not David Bowie either. Shocking, I know. And there is a line or two from the show itself. I'm sure you'll be able to spot them. And there is an excerpt from _Pulp Fiction_ and Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin"." Oh, and John Locke. The real one.

**Rating:** PG-13 (language, adult themes)

**Summary:** People live and people die. People grieve and people cry. People hate and people love. Planes can crash and trees can fall; fire can catch and hearts can break. This really isn't anything special. This really isn't anything new. They're just missing the distractions we call everyday life.

**Author's Note:** Alright. Apparently instead of studying, I write _Lost_ fanfic instead. Probably not going to help the GPA. Oh well. I have to say, this story was created from a strange inspiration: the promos from UK's Channel 4. I know they have been circulating for awhile, but me being new to the fanon andall, I finally got to see the promos, and they were just so beautiful and odd, and I found myself inspired in the strangest way. I feel as though everything I just said made little or no sense. Oh well. But here it is: a giant ensemble piece featuring all our favorites. I guess spoler-wise, this runs around the second season, somewhere caught between "What Kate Did" and "The Hunting Party." Enjoy. And listen to a little Bowie as you read ;) Thanks for reading.

* * *

* * *

_Pushing thru the market square, so many mothers sighing  
News had just come over, we had five years left to cry in  
News guy wept and told us, earth was really dying  
Cried so much his face was wet, then I knew he was not lying…_

_- - -_

"And if this is the right answer then we have ourselves a new winner! Let me hear you people yell! I tell you, folks, if his answer is the right one, he is the winner of an all-expenses paid trip to Syd –"

A clipped tone, a rifled stack of papers. Breaking news flashing across the bottom on the screen, Channel 8.

"This is Channel 8 news, bringing you the latest coverage.

Breaking news just in from Sydney, Australia. LA bound Oceanic Flight 815 out of Sydney has disappeared. Air traffic control reports the plane disappeared off the radar two hours in and not heard from after. Radar detection has insofar been unsuccessful in attempting to locate the downed airliner. The head of Oceanic Airlines promises a through investigation. Search and rescue has been called off indefinitely.

It is believed Flight 815 has crashed and all passengers are dead. Details at 11."

Black screen.

"We apologize for the interruption. We now return you to our usual programming."

"And that's our show! Thanks for joining us and tomorrow –"

_Click._

"But, Raoul! You cannot leave me! Stay, stay and make love to –"

_Click._

"Violence in the Middle East yet another day. A car bomb detonated near –"

_Click._

" – charged with conspiracy and facing trial on –"

_Click._

"Come gather 'round people, wherever you roam  
And admit that the waters around you have grown –"

_Click._

"- welcomed a healthy baby boy into the world–"

_Click._

"The truth is you're the weak. And I'm the tyranny of evil men. But I'm tryin', Ringo. I'm tryin' real hard to be a shepherd –"

_Click._

Palm trees, blue sky and tan sand.

"Gilligan, little buddy, come with me…"

Faux audience laughter and applause, nearly half a century strong.

And the waves crash down.

* * *

_And all the fat-skinny people, and all the tall-short people  
And all the nobody people, and all the somebody people  
I never thought I'd need so many people_

_- - -_

They say that you are more likely to die in a car crash than a plane crash. They say that flying in a plane might just be the safest thing you will ever do.

They say a lot of thing. But no one ever seems to know who "they" are.

They probably weren't on board when the back of a plane, Oceanic Flight 815, fell down from the sky.

"One…"

"Oh, shit. I'm probably going to have to get Mom a new present."

"This isn't happening. I am so close, so close..."

"Breathe, just breathe. In…and out…yeah that's it. Just breathe. This isn't happening. It isn't real. Just breathe and it will all go away and be perfect. Like it is supposed to be."

"Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, they will be done, on earth as it is in heaven…"

"…two…"

"Fucking bollocks. I left it. I fucking left it in the bleeding john. Jesus fucking Christ. Mary, mother of God. What have I done?"

"He isn't here. Oh, dear Lord, he isn't here…"

"Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee…"

"Unlock them, just unlock them, and grab it, and breathe…"

"…three…"

"I shouldn't have done it."

"…deliver us, Lord, from every evil…"

"Ain't karma a bitch?"

"I shouldn't even be here."

"I'm sorry."

"…four…"

"Fuck this."

"Oh Jesus. Oh God."

"I'm sorry."

"…and grant us the peace…"

"I love you."

"…and mercy…"

"Forgive me."

"…five."

"Breathe. Just breathe."

* * *

_And it was cold and it rained so I felt like an actor  
And I thought of Ma and I wanted to get back there  
Your face, your race, the way that you talk  
I kiss you, you're beautiful, I want you to walk_

_We've got five years, stuck on my eyes  
Five years, what a surprise  
We've got five years; my brain hurts a lot  
_

_Five years, that's all we've got_

_- - -_

TV Land and Bob Denver led Hurley to believe that being lost at sea, abandoned on a beautiful beach with beautiful women and beautiful sunsets would be something easy, something a joker like himself might be able to handle. But the professor is a former member of the Iraqi Republican Guard. The Howells are Korean and forty years too young. Mary Ann killed a man or two or twenty five and fell for a man trapped in the reel of a John Wayne film or an episode of _Cops_.

He'd blame himself. But he likes to think he's working past that.

He can still peer into his past, and everything can be related to the numbers, threading along like a chilling game of connect-the-dots. He was four when his papi died. Eight when he broke his arm. 42 was the number of days he spent in a psych ward. He could keep going. But he counts to fifteen, and then tells himself to stop.

It makes him wonder all the same. Coincidence or curse?

"You make your own luck, Mr. Reyes. Don't blame it on the damn numbers. You're looking for an excuse that doesn't exist."

There are no coconut telephones here. He wants to know where they all went wrong.

Michael called his son every Sunday for three years of Walt's life. He would call, and for awhile, for awhile Susan appeased him, let Michael hear his only son giggle, or speak, monosyllabic, tinny and distorted, miles upon miles away.

He liked to imagine they were in the backyard, talking in tin cans.

Finally, she had enough. Changed their phone number. And one Sunday, he called, and all he got was the cold, crisp, automated operator voice. "I'm sorry. The number you have dialed is no longer in service…"

Those days, those days on the island, before the raft and the boat and the Others. Those days. Those days Michael likes to think are all the Sundays lost in the connection from one tin can to another.

For Claire, every day seems like a Sunday night around here. That slow almost careless laziness attributed to excess time to kill fraught with a sort of anxiety and fear as to what the upcoming week shall bring.

Every day is a Sunday night. And Claire is wondering when the last time was she went to church. She is wondering when the last time was she got down on her knees. And prayed.

She can see the way he carries it around with him. Claire can see the way that Charlie clutches that statue. And as she holds her baby close, she wonders if that issue of virginity really makes all the difference.

Sun has only slept with one man in her entire life. Her husband. She has only loved one man and hated the same. And she asks herself, as she buries roots beneath the soil, if that nullifies it all. Love mixing with hate leading to a stilted sort of apathy that has led them into this. A marriage minus the fairy-tale.

Sun didn't grow up telling herself of glass slippers and poisoned apples. She wasn't raised in the shadow of a setting sun Prince Charming was galloping off to the castle under.

It was something pure. Something only the real thing could dishonor.

When she was a little girl, she believed she would find the man she loved and be happy forever.

When she is a grown woman, she believes happiness and love must be grown and reaped together and the harvest is never simple, but maybe, just maybe, all the more satisfying.

When they first started dating, Bernard would take Rose out every Saturday night to go dancing. The Magnolia Club. Every Saturday night they would show up: he in his second-best suit, and Rose in her famous red dress.

She remembers spinning around on the dance floor, Bernard stumbling over his two left feet.

And she remembers the other patrons. She remembers their eyes, the way they seemed unable to stop staring. The way they couldn't seem to comprehend that a white man was twirling a black woman across the freshly waxed floor.

She remembers their eyes. And when she looks at the jungle, standing safe upon the sand, she can see them once again. And that one word lingers in her mind. Judgment, judgment, judgment.

But Bernard will spin her round once more, and the record will play again.

Charlie pulls the needle up and off the record and relishes the eerie silence that follows, odd sounds reverberating off the dark walls of the hatch, the lack of space amplifying the noise all the more.

Holding the record sleeve in his hand, he stares down and wonders. Wonders if in twenty years he'll be the new Geromino Jackson. Instead of platform boots and an overpowering afro, he'll be mocked for his black coated fingernails and suicidal, heroin chic lack of style.

He hums a bar and wonders how it was possible, before the heroin and the ensuing insanity, they came up with a chorus as insipid and devoid of meaning as "you all everybody." And thinks that simple lack of meaning is what led him to the powder in the first place.

Disappointment and love seem to be two drugs dangerously laced together for her. Ana-Lucia hasn't felt a genuine attraction, a real bond or sense of desire with another man for too long. Those feelings all fizzled with a gunshot, a failed pregnancy and the subsequent divorce papers.

But there's Jack. Jack is strong. He will bend but he won't break. He won't break and he will be there, and there is something beautifully simple and clear in that.

She likes the feel of his hands. The steadiness, the firm grip. There is something promising there. There is something vaguely intoxicating, in a dizzy, foreign way.

It isn't tequila. A slow burn. A drug that dulls the senses, droops the eyelids, slows the pulse. She is tired of the anesthetics and ready for something real.

Mr. Eko hates the taste of heroin. In his mind and on his tongue it tastes the same as dirt, the same as the dirt an old man's corpse once laid dead upon.

He can see the entire earth, paved in the dust of that one man's passing. He can see the entire globe, clouded in the gun smoke. He pulled the trigger, the shot heard 'round the world.

He marks a tree, and stops, stands still.

Mr. Eko has faith. He believes. He has faith they will build an ark all their own and sail their way out of here, amid the torrent of rain and the onslaught of fear. And they will live. Forever.

Jack quit going to church at the age of 16. With age and feigned maturity, weekly worship had become optional. So he had laid in bed until noon as his mother and father, clad in Sunday's best, clasped their hands in prayer and raised their heads in faith.

He found it disgustingly ironic. His father: a church-going man, the good, humble doctor shining in the eyes of the clergy. He knew then his father was anything but holy. Now he knows he is a murderer, a dead one, once baring a scalpel and a gin and tonic as his weapon of choice.

He wonders, wonder how long he's going to have to keep living out the sins of his father. He bets until they're repaid. But he doesn't know what that means.

He won't tell you. But he'll think it. It's why he hates the concept of faith.

He hates it, the word faith. Jack despises the word and everything it has come to mean in his life. It makes him think of Locke, Locke, standing in front of him, challenging him silently with his eyes, branding himself a man of faith and casting Jack as the man of science. It is Locke versus Jack, Jack against his father, science versus faith, fact against belief, Darwin against Jesus.

Happy versus sad? Right versus wrong? Life versus death?

And finally, with thoughts of his dead father, missing on this mystery island, an empty coffin, thoughts of Sarah, flexing her toes and the tears that seemed to work a will of their own down his face. He thinks of John Locke, standing on the beach, whistling into the night. Of Kate walking away with Sawyer, leaving him, breathless and alone. He thinks of Michael alone on driftwood, sailing the high seas, calling for his son, lost, lost, lost. He thinks of broken bones and failing heartbeats; of colliding cars and irreparable memories. He thinks of final breaths and growing cemeteries.

He thinks of a plane that crashes in a jungle and the survivors left to sort out life from death.

And wonders if this is fate, faith, fate.

He thinks of himself trying to measure and clock the distance and meaning, the significance of it all in his own laments terms and defining it succinctly, neatly and plainly.

Jack turns away, swiping a hand at his eyes, wiping the tears away.

He wonders how much suffering they need to endure in order to be forgiven.

He knows what his dad would say. That's why the Red Sox will never win the damn series. And as the days trickle down, he finds himself slowly nodding in agreement.

Jin likes that he can't understand. He likes that he has come to read faces like pages of a text without words but merely symbols and images. He likes that he can pick up the tone rather than the actual words, how he can watch emotions paint a picture and tell a story across a person's face and it's all he needs to comprehend.

He understands "Sun." And "Others." "Walt." "Michael." "Sawyer." "Doctor." "Help." He is still working on "friend" and "trust" and "love."

He likes that he can disengage. He likes that no one expects him to have the answers, that no one expects him to come in, triumphant and heroic.

No one expects it of him. Except for Sun. But he bets that he's let her down one too many times, and she'll tell him, in cold, clipped English, she doesn't want to gamble on him anymore.

Jin slips the knife horizontally and warm fish guts spill out onto the stone.

Sayid once watched a man as he was disemboweled. He has seen every sick shade death has to offer. He's not impressed. Dismemberment, electrocution, bullets through the brain, the heart, the soul. The ending is ruined anyway. The finale is always the same. Chilled hands, parched lips, pale, pale pallor and empty, empty eyes.

Shannon's was the first dead body he ever actually held. Cradled her like a baby, the irony not lost upon him.

Shannon was the first dead body he might have actually loved.

It's a funny thing. Love. Ever since Nadia ran off, leaving him with a bullet in his leg and a barrage of consequences to accept, he has been overflowing with the stuff. Love. He threw himself into his work, telling himself the gun, the knife, the thrust and the kill was his dangerous lover. He told himself dreams of the future were his secret admirer.

On his way back to her, he fell out of the sky. He'd say he landed in hell, but he's not quite sure he believes in it, and even if he did, he imagines there wouldn't be palm trees and sand. Or children. Yes. He uses logic and tells himself this is anything but hell.

But there was Shannon. And she became the perfect target for a painfully displaced love.

He would feel guilty. He would, except she felt the same towards him.

Sayid thinks it is right that the two of them are buried next to each other. He imagines that when it all came down to it, the two of them ultimately belonged together.

And that's why he is still alive and she is underground. He is alive and Nadia is alive, and yes, sometimes you do need someone else to love. Sometimes you do need someone else to love, someone to help you forget, someone to be the bridge between the past and the future.

She was in love with Boone. And the bridge couldn't hold their weight.

Virile vigilante violence weighs down her dreams. She'll call half of it imagined, but knows more than that was real. Libby was trained in the school of Sigmund Freud but can't think of a single clinical term to describe her current situation.

She would call it a joke, a cosmic joke, but then she remembers her reasoning behind it is just as flimsy and fraught with potential painful comedy.

She wonders if it would make a difference to these people if she was a shrink or a stripper. A schoolteacher or a soccer mom, a secretary or a scuba instructor. She wonders what it is that people do with themselves when the past doesn't have to have any bearing in the present.

She dreams it feels like home.

Homesick. Kate is homesick for a home she might have blown out of the ground four long years ago. She is homesick for nameless motels drug dealers, prostitutes and fugitives like herself frequent. But then she realizes that might just be a lie. She has been on the run for far too long and her shoes can't seem to hold her up much longer.

She is homesick for home cooking. She is homesick for clean laundry and open backyards. She is homesick for the warmth of someone's arms around her; holding her steady, steady, steady in place, whispering in her ear that she is home, home at last.

Kate hasn't been home in years. But she bets that's what happens to a family of forgery and an assembly of actors whose lines fade into ad lib twenty years odd after opening night.

The finale was really something else.

If Kate once had shackles around her wrists, she might now call herself free.

If Sawyer had ever read any Homer, he might come to look at himself as Odysseus. He already possesses the penchant for ego inflation. With this in mind, he could easily float a little higher.

He floated the high seas. He confronted absolute villains and watched death skip across his line of sight. He wandered the jungle and slipped out of consciousness.

He looks down at the scrap piece of paper in his hand, his unsent message for a bottle the tide has swept away. He won't be needing that anymore. No. He's right here. He's still here. And so is she.

He tosses the pieces in the air, confetti raining down.

A pencil scratches across yellow-lined paper, the only sound, save for the hum of pipes and the music of machinery, Locke alone with a table and antiquated computer.

_"To love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues."_

He stares at the scrawl of words before him and wonders why they came to mind.

Locke's mother told him that he was special. She told him this too many years too late, but he hates to say, it left its mark. He wonders if its because of his name. John Locke. You don't name a man with an entire load of history laid to rest upon his shoulders without a certain level of expectation. Or belief.

It's a destiny, all its own. And maybe he will. Bring order out of chaos and watch the world make sense for awhile.

Yes. He has heard what the others have to say. That this, the island, was little more than purgatory, that they were hanging in the balance between life and death, repenting their sins in a limbo Milton could scarcely create.

No. This isn't _Paradise Lost_. It isn't the Garden of Eden. It isn't heaven. It's not hell. It isn't punishment and certainly not a brief vacation.

No, it's not really anything.

Locke presses the 'execute' button and saves the world for 108 more minutes. For 108 more minutes, the world sits back, the televisions blare, preaching, warning, telling.

Maybe they are finally seeing life for what it really is. Without the garish Technicolor or the monochromatic black and white to blind the way. Maybe it's all in slow-motion, paused and frozen in place.

Maybe it is nothing at all. But finally free of distraction.

He leans back, folds his hands, and smiles.

Yes. This is life. This is life at its very finest.

There isn't a button here to change the channel.

* * *

_(five years, that's all we've got)_

* * *


End file.
